(01-12-2015 09:14 AM)yakherder Wrote: If I had to pick a stance, I'd say I'm against the death penalty for reasons of cause/effect. I don't believe statistics show it moves towards the intended goal. At worst, it moves farther away from it. At best, it's a big waste of taxpayer money.

Ethically, I don't care. The concept of removing people from this world, I'm good with. The system we necessarily have to have in place to do so in an organized manner within the boundaries of law, however, makes doing so impractical.

The only reason McVeigh only stayed on death row for 4 years instead of 20 was that he gave up all appeals. He wanted to just get this over with. Nope. Not that easy buddy. Girly wouldn't have let him off so easy.

That and he was a lunatic......

I vaguely remember meeting him at a "state meeting" of the Michigan Militia......

Like the latest shooting in Colorado --- you can bet that the defense attorney is going to enter a plea of "diminished capacity" - to keep this guy off death row.
....

So why is crazy a defense?

....
I've known lots of crazy people over the years - and even as batshit crazy as some of them are - they still know it's a really bad idea to go about snuffing the neighbors.
.....

Why just crazy??? What about stupid???? Why can't you use stupid as a defense.... "Sorry your Honor, my client is too stupid to stand trial"....

What about lazy??? Procrastinators??? Anti Social????

.....

Fuck that... I say if you're able to go through all the complexities of killing people, and it's not as easy as you might think.... Getting the weapons, getting ammunition, driving to your destination -- are all reasonably complex operations and show you're able to function....

So if you can kill people -- we should be able to legally execute you. IN fact -- if you claim crazy as a defense -- I think that should give the state the right to execute you in an entertaining way. After being convicted they take you to death row to hook your nuts up to the 220V outlet and throw the switch..

None of this mamby pamby "lethal injection" for you crazy fuckers......

Drawn and quartered with monster trucks in the Astrodome for you..

I disagree, there are some people who just can't differentiate right and wrong.

There are any number of legal examples that back that up. No, they shouldn't be executed. Although, living with knowing what they've done and trying to live with it, might be more painful.

Most people have enough empathy to understand this.

But as if to knock me down, reality came around
And without so much as a mere touch, cut me into little pieces

(01-12-2015 02:43 PM)dancefortwo Wrote: Black Eagle, my understanding in talking to mental health professionals is that people who are mentally ill who have committed a crime, particularly people with schizophrenia, are at the mercy of this disease and can't be responsible for their actions. Of course, schizophrenia is an extreme case of mental illness. Brain scans can track the extent of the severity of schizophrenia these days but I don't know if these scans are ever submitted as evidence in a court of law. I have had a brief encounter with someone with schizophrenia and it's a horrible mental illness.

Correct me if I'm wrong but several psychologists I've spoken to and others I've read about have decried the US's solution to mental illness. The United States puts most of their mentally ill people in prison after committing small or large crimes instead of mental institutions. Is this correct? I'm not sure if it's because mental health is so underfunded and mental illnesses are so stigmatized by the American population that everyone would rather just get rid of these people, lock them up, thereby making them and their mental illness invisible. It seems to me that mental health screenings should be a regular part of life just as inoculations are.

I'd be interested in the statistical difference between funding for mental health vs prisons. Everytime I hear about someone who goes off the deep end and shoots people or does some other horrible thing I always wonder if it couldn't have been prevented by a mental health screening.

Just my thoughts on the matter.

During the brief year I worked in corrections (in Ontario, not the U.S.), the detention centre where I was had had a number of inmates with mental health issues. The reasons they were there ranged from disagreements over funding to administrative flaws. We had one repeat visitor, and the predictability of it all was almost comical. He'd assault someone, he'd end up in the detention centre completely out of control, he'd spend some time there in segregation until we could get him on the proper meds, after a couple months of administrative hurdles he'd get transferred to a mental health facility, while there and on meds he'd quickly improve to the point where they'd end up releasing him, then he'd voluntarily stop taking his meds and repeat the process all over again.

We had one guy who was former Canadian Forces and had been held as a POW in Bosnia a while back. He pretty much sat in his bed all day, in permanent segregation, without saying a word, but we knew from experience that if the right thing set him off he'd go from 0 to 100 in a fraction of a second. Introducing new nurses to him was always stressful because his typical demeanor made it difficult to believe what he was capable of, and when doing things like taking blood, giving him his meds, etc., if they hadn't personally witnessed it before they'd tend to get very complacent and let their guards down. To this day, I don't know what the hell this guy was doing in a detention centre and why the mental health facility couldn't take him.

One of the things that mental health professionals and scientists are working on is away to manipulate medications for mental health that will be time released so the individual isn't going on and off their medication all the time. This is actually one of the symptoms of schizophrenia and bipolar disease. After being on the medication for a while the patient thinks they're perfectly ok and don't need the medication anymore. They then cycle in and out of the hospital or prisons.

There is a time released antipsychotic shot that lasts two weeks. I think there's a shot that lasts a month. The goal is to find a way to perhaps implant antipsychotic medication under the skin and have it slowly release over a years time. Scientists are also trying to find better anti depressants and antipsychotics that don't have so many side effects. They're hoping that with the recent mapping of the human brain they will be in a better position to provide better mental care for people. They need funding though.

I know people might find mental health funding and mapping the human brain off topic to mass shootings but it really isn't.

(01-12-2015 01:46 PM)Black Eagle Wrote: By the way, SYZ, state of mind is an ELEMENT of most crimes. If the defendant doesn't have the proper state of mind [mens rea] there is no crime.

I take your point, but in a Utopian world, the perpetrator's state of mind wouldn't enter into the guilt v. innocent equation. The actuality of the crime is the death of the child or the rape of the woman. Whether or not you're high on drugs or clinically depressed doesn't make your victims any less deader, or less sexually violated.

As the English dramatist George Chapman wrote: "Ere he shall lose an eye for such a trifle... For doing deeds of nature! I'm ashamed. The law is such an ass." (It's the stupidly rigid application of the law that this phrase calls into question.)

(01-12-2015 02:59 PM)yakherder Wrote: During the brief year I worked in corrections (in Ontario, not the U.S.), the detention centre where I was had had a number of inmates with mental health issues. The reasons they were there ranged from disagreements over funding to administrative flaws. We had one repeat visitor, and the predictability of it all was almost comical. He'd assault someone, he'd end up in the detention centre completely out of control, he'd spend some time there in segregation until we could get him on the proper meds, after a couple months of administrative hurdles he'd get transferred to a mental health facility, while there and on meds he'd quickly improve to the point where they'd end up releasing him, then he'd voluntarily stop taking his meds and repeat the process all over again.

We had one guy who was former Canadian Forces and had been held as a POW in Bosnia a while back. He pretty much sat in his bed all day, in permanent segregation, without saying a word, but we knew from experience that if the right thing set him off he'd go from 0 to 100 in a fraction of a second. Introducing new nurses to him was always stressful because his typical demeanor made it difficult to believe what he was capable of, and when doing things like taking blood, giving him his meds, etc., if they hadn't personally witnessed it before they'd tend to get very complacent and let their guards down. To this day, I don't know what the hell this guy was doing in a detention centre and why the mental health facility couldn't take him.

One of the things that mental health professionals and scientists are working on is away to manipulate medications for mental health that will be time released so the individual isn't going on and off their medication all the time. This is actually one of the symptoms of schizophrenia and bipolar disease. After being on the medication for a while the patient thinks they're perfectly ok and don't need the medication anymore. They then cycle in and out of the hospital or prisons.

There is a time released antipsychotic shot that lasts two weeks. I think there's a shot that lasts a month. The goal is to find a way to perhaps implant antipsychotic medication under the skin and have it slowly release over a years time. Scientists are also trying to find better anti depressants and antipsychotics that don't have so many side effects. They're hoping that with the recent mapping of the human brain they will be in a better position to provide better mental care for people. They need funding though.

I know people might find mental health funding and mapping the human brain off topic to mass shootings but it really isn't.

(01-12-2015 04:24 PM)SYZ Wrote: I take your point, but in a Utopian world, the perpetrator's state of mind wouldn't enter into the guilt v. innocent equation. The actuality of the crime is the death of the child or the rape of the woman. Whether or not you're high on drugs or clinically depressed doesn't make your victims any less deader, or less sexually violated.

(01-12-2015 04:24 PM)SYZ Wrote: I take your point, but in a Utopian world, the perpetrator's state of mind wouldn't enter into the guilt v. innocent equation. The actuality of the crime is the death of the child or the rape of the woman. Whether or not you're high on drugs or clinically depressed doesn't make your victims any less deader, or less sexually violated.